"Nothing makes sense and that's okay", "Mourning Facebook Past", "Why Tech Companies have so many Employees", "How Music Became Meaningless", and "Accepting Pain".
On the large number of tech company employees, I am sure you understand, but maybe your readers don't, how stochastic those incremental improvements are and how that can make most employees at any one time look totally useless. An employee may do nothing value-added 9 years out of 10 but then make a great breakthrough in the 10th
Or 9 out of 10 hires who look great up front may end up adding little value but the 10th is a superstar, and there is no way to tell which one it will be before you let them all work for the company for 5 or more years. The gamble is similar to VC funding in that way-- the 0.01% improvements you mention are an average over a very spiky distribution.
My personal experience leads me to emphasize this point: in 15 years at Google, a large majority of all value I created for the company was in one six-month project. Nobody could have predicted in advance what that project would be, or whether I would have another hit like that (indeed I left in part because I sensed I wasn't on track to ever have another such hit). I "just happened" to be in the right place at the right time; and tech company human capital allocation is largely a process of trying, with very high failure rates, to put people in those right places.
On the large number of tech company employees, I am sure you understand, but maybe your readers don't, how stochastic those incremental improvements are and how that can make most employees at any one time look totally useless. An employee may do nothing value-added 9 years out of 10 but then make a great breakthrough in the 10th
Or 9 out of 10 hires who look great up front may end up adding little value but the 10th is a superstar, and there is no way to tell which one it will be before you let them all work for the company for 5 or more years. The gamble is similar to VC funding in that way-- the 0.01% improvements you mention are an average over a very spiky distribution.
My personal experience leads me to emphasize this point: in 15 years at Google, a large majority of all value I created for the company was in one six-month project. Nobody could have predicted in advance what that project would be, or whether I would have another hit like that (indeed I left in part because I sensed I wasn't on track to ever have another such hit). I "just happened" to be in the right place at the right time; and tech company human capital allocation is largely a process of trying, with very high failure rates, to put people in those right places.
Yes. That’s a very good point.